1856: My Mormon Mission Broke Me - Tara Herbert Pt. 1
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2024
⏱️ 186 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tara Herbert, born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and adopted at age two by white Mormon parents from Utah, recounts her complex upbringing in a predominantly white and Mormon environment. Raised with four biological siblings, she navigates her identity as a black girl in Utah, where she initially struggles to recognize her racial difference. Despite feeling out of place, she engages with Mormonism deeply, experiencing conflicting emotions about her faith and cultural identity. Tara's journey evolves through high school, where she grapples with societal perceptions of blackness, sexuality, and Mormon teachings on race and gender roles. Her mission to Atlanta, Georgia, exposes her to systemic racism within the Mormon Church and the broader community, challenging her beliefs and sense of self. Despite enduring trauma and grappling with guilt and shame, Tara finds solace in her eventual marriage and motherhood, yet continues to confront the complexities of her Mormon upbringing and racial identity.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I am your host |
| 0:03.8 | John Delinn. I am here with my dear partner Margie. Hey Margie, hi there. |
| 0:08.4 | Thanks for coming. Thank you. Today we are going to be interviewing Tara Herbert. |
| 0:14.2 | Hey Tara, how you doing? |
| 0:15.6 | Good. |
| 0:16.0 | Thanks for joining us. |
| 0:17.1 | Thank you for having me. |
| 0:18.6 | Yeah. |
| 0:19.4 | And for those who just kind of want the preview of some of the topics |
| 0:22.3 | you're going to be talking about. |
| 0:23.4 | Terror's story involves a lot of really important themes. |
| 0:26.6 | Adoption, transracial adoption, growing up as a woman of color in Utah, going to Utah schools. Tara has in her outline |
| 0:36.4 | sexuality and sort of navigating sexuality as a teenager, you know, mission, faith transition kind of stuff marriage childhood and of course |
| 0:47.0 | navigating a faith crisis those are some of the topics in your outline yeah did I |
| 0:52.0 | miss any big ones? |
| 0:53.0 | No, not that I can think of. |
| 0:55.0 | Okay. |
| 0:56.0 | Yeah, well we're super excited to have you and... |
| 0:58.0 | Yeah, I'm excited to be here. |
| 1:00.0 | Yeah, and sometimes we like to give people a chance to kind of state an intention of why they would come on Mormon stories and why they want to tell their story. |
| 1:08.6 | So maybe we can start there. |
| 1:10.4 | Yeah, I feel like my intentions are probably the biggest Mormon reason why is just to have a record of it for my sons, you know, I want them to know their mom and they are always going to be Mormon adjacent. |
... |
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